Phytoplankton bloom off the coast of Scotland

This Envisat image captures the green swirls of a phytoplankton bloom in the North Sea off the coast of eastern Scotland. The chlorophyll phytoplankton collectively contain colour the ocean's waters, which provides a means of detecting these tiny organisms from space with dedicated ocean colour sensors, like Envisat's Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument. MERIS acquired this image on 7 May 2008, working in Full Resolution mode to provide a spatial resolution of 300 m.